Princes Christina, younger sister of the former queen of the Netherlands Beatrix, is known for keeping a low profile, this apart from hitting the news when she has invented yet another artifice to enlarge her financial estate using creative ways to avoid paying taxes on it to the Dutch state. She is not only a creative woman in the realm of finances, but also in art. Latest spectacular event being the auction of a splendid art work from her private collection, a drawing by the famed painter from Antwerp, Rubens. At first the work was valued below one million dolar, but by leaking the pending sale of this work at Sotheby’s New York to the Dutch press, which caused a scandal in certain museum director’s circles – who would have wanted to buy the work for an under the table price – such apublic publicity fuss was created that the estimated value of the work more than tripled even before the auction took place. In the end the price at auction was tenfold the initial estimate, 8,2 million dollars, but… this is not the end of the princess and her artistry in economics. She had not failed to notice the sensation of the shredded work during auction by the British artist Banksy at Sotheby’s London, fall last year, how his shredded artwork of ‘the girl with the balloon’ had been recreated at auction. Sotheby’s London did put the work on show in its half shredded state presented in a construction specially developed for it.

Princess Christina had been thinking a lot about this historical event and as she has a highly developed sense for art and money she decided to do the same. As said she tends to keep a low profile, so shredding of the work was not during the auction, but straight after… like her great example Banksy who did not destroy an artwork, but created a new one, baptised “Love is in the bin, 2018”. Christina had her work shredded as well by Sotheby’s New York – be it as a private event – and named it accordingly. The price estimates of this new work made by a Dutch princess are not yet known, certain is that there is a large clientele for such a royal work in the circles of art loving oil sheiks and their museums of modern art.

If she had been buying her own Rubens drawing with her own money to turn it into a work of art by herself, we do not know, still this private photograph has been leaked to me and I am proud to offer it to the world to honour the creative ingenuity of this priceless princess.

BANKSY RIGHTFUL PLAGIARISM
in 2018 of the idea of
Auto-Destructive Art
by Gustav Metzger (1959/1961)
Banksy artwork self-destructs after selling at auction for £1m 1,883 – Guardian News Published on Oct 6, 2018: Girl With Balloon, a well-known Banksy artwork, is the final item in an auction at Sotheby’s in London. Shortly after selling for £1.04m, the canvas passes through a shredder installed in the bottom of the frame…
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Good overview on Gustav Metzger at this website/page: https://monoskop.org/Gustav_Metzger

BANKSY RIGHTFUL PLAGIARISM
[added contextual comment]
I did participate as a young man in the 1966 DIAS (Destruction In Art) symposium in London… so it struck me immediately that this was also a hommage to Gustav Metzger (as well as market-conspiracy (including Sotheby’s) with a double meaning re-valuation of a neatly (half threaded) work; mind you there have been many who started of with shifted around cut-ups of their work… the Czech poet/writer/artist Jiří Kolář being a famous one = http://www.tresbohemes.com/2017/08/the-striking-collages-of-jiri-kolar/) it also fits in the situ ‘détournement’ tradition a product from post WWII surrealist Lettrist actions & theory predating the Gustav Metzger first Auto-Destruction Manifesto of 1958)…
My visual lecture from the year 2000 traces back this idea of temporarity and the act itself as the artistic moment: http://imaginarymuseum.org/PTA/index.html (sroll number III tackles the ‘reification’ of the artistic gesture…)

What is misunderstood in most comments is that the art work is realised only at the moment of its self-destruction. Auto-destructive art is momentary art, whereby the act is the work and not the reification.

Postscript
On 17. October this video with the full story was published on YouTube
“Shredding Banksy’s the Girl and Balloon – The Director’s Cut”https://youtu.be/9MezgOU9vRg?t=6

For those who can read Dutch my article published on the 17th of April 2014 at the moment when Beatrix Ruf had just been appointed. Title: “Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam: Beatrix RUF her calling just in time, but who did call her and what is her vocation?” Indeed the title can hardly be translated into English as the German word ‘Ruf’ means call, ‘roep’ in Dutch and ‘roepen’ is verb meaning ‘to call/calling’, further the noun ‘roeping’ means in this context ‘vocation’.

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The article is a documented analysis of the organisational structure of the Stedelijk Museum that was in origin (it’s best & most creative period) just a municipal museum for modern art as the name says. I explain the process of halfhearted privatisation, the practice of sponsorship by business tycoons and the double agenda strategy of those who invest and deal in art and use their position in the board of the Stedelijk Museum also to advance their social prestige and the market value of their art property.

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My article questions the ‘world class’ status idea and the art-market-competition with a yearly list by the art-trade magazine Art Review of the “Power Top 100” in the art-market world in which Beatrix Ruf in 2013 held a 7th position, with Sheikha Al-Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, Head of the Qatar Museums Authority (QMA) and sister of the Emir, as number 1. [note 1]

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When we look at the names listed in the ‘Roep Ruf Terug’ (Call Ruf Back) advertisement) we see several names of those who have been listed in the Top 100 international art-market-championship. The opening name Marina Abramović is for instance number 5 on the 2014 list. It must be clear this is a partisan call for many on the list, more than just a lobby, it has many characteristics of the meanings embedded in the Chinese (Cantonese) word ‘kongsi’ 公司 a traditional clan like structure that evolved with the diaspora of Chinese migrants to a world wide system of common cultural bound paired with common economic interest. Not all the ‘Roep Ruf Terug’ signatories do have a stake in the art market and several may have been attracted to pair their lesser known name with better known names (a standard phenomenon with all social-political advertisements in newspapers). [note 2]

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I do have an alternative vision whereby I re-value the local over the international… as anything internationally acclaimed now, once had a local origin. Even miss Abramović was once local in Amsterdam – I do remember her as such far before she started to behave like a goddess doing these unbearable pretentious performances… (by the way she had the guts to send via social media a Kickstarter fund-raising appeal for some temple venue for her own glory in New York, if I remember well designed by another signatory of the Ruf list Rem Koolhaas, I had the dishonour to receive one of those appeals for money as well, what a shame!). [note 3]

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How come that a municipal museum cannot have a director who has her or his roots first of all in the local and national art scene? That is a rhetorical question. The answer is that the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam is not anymore in the first place a local cultural and educational institution, but an asset in the international art-martket and mass-tourism industry. The pleasures of local uniqueness has given way to the uniformity of what has been pepped up, by the kongsi, to be of “global value”…

Another element is that these ‘flown in from abroad directors and curators’ lack a local power basis and tend to be moldable material in the hands of either the co-opted museum board members or public administrators.

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I do not pledge for any provincialism, on the contrary, I think that the whole business type of dealing with ‘art’ by attracting so called ‘famous’ curators from abroad claiming it a necessary step to reach the eagerly wanted status of ‘world class museum’, is in itself the uttermost provincial attitude to be found in the year 2018. It is sheer lack of imagination. It is lazy. It is proof of incompetence. It negates all chances of the unpredictable, the core element of any creative act. It is repetition of the same hailed names and styles, the world over. Nothing new will come from it.

[1] In the 2017 list Beatrix Ruf has fallen down to position 27 on the Top 100 list, with this comment: “Tireless curator and adviser, ex-director of Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. // It has turned into a tough year for Ruf, who just resigned from her position as director of the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, in the midst of alleged conflicts of interest between her institutional role and her broader activities as an adviser. While the effects of that remain to be seen, she nevertheless managed to develop a programme at the Stedelijk that navigates seamlessly between her usual focus on art’s next hot young thing and reexaminations of work by more mature practitioners, as recent shows for Jana Euler and Jordan Wolfson, but also Jean Tinguely and Ed van der Elsken, demonstrate. Furthermore, Ruf’s strength has always been her ability to operate as a meta-curator, in various advisory and panellist roles. In January, she launched the first Verbier Art Summit around the question of whether museums should consider ‘de-growth’, and she continues to be one of the core advisers to Luma Arles.”See link…

There were also less friendly reactions after the raising of money for a project that flopped, which is a common occurrence now with fund-raising actions using social-media and the internet, an ideal becomes crooked very soon. Like this header in the New York Post of November 11, 2017: “Marina Abramovic raised $2M for canceled art project, hasn’t given money back (…) The artist is present but the cash is gone.”

Interesting to note how Rem Koolhaas has made sure he at least is paid, because he can be in everything, but not in charity:

“… last month the artist revealed she was abandoning the project, after learning the price tag had mushroomed to $31 million. Her surprise announcement left residents of Hudson and shocked donors questioning what she did with the cash. In addition to the 2013 Kickstarter campaign, which raised over $660,000, her non-profit institute raked in $1.5 million in donations between 2011 and 2015, tax filings show. Jay-Z gave “a substantial donation” to the Kickstarter campaign, according to press reports. He did not respond to a request for comment last week. Some Kickstarter donors complained that they did not receive their promised rewards for contributing to the institute and others wondered how their contributions were spent, if at all, and wanted an accounting. When asked if Abramovic would return the cash, a spokeswoman for the artist said all the money raised through Kickstarter, plus additional funds, went to pay Koolhaas’s firm.”See link…

To close off this footnote on the first signatory for the ‘Roep Ruf Terug’ campaign of Mariana Abramavić, I cite a source that has asked Abramović for a reaction and did get back some accounts details on the failed project, in spite of its name the blog ‘Vulture – devouring culture’ gives her a chance to reply on November 14, 2017:

“This is terrible for me,” Abramovic said, before detailing how she personally contributed $1.1 million of the $2.2 million the institute raised. “The majority of those funds were direct contributions of my own money, which I earned as an artist.” As for the Kickstarter, which raised $661,452 (after Kickstarter’s administrative fee: $596,667), the purpose of that money was clear on the page: “This Kickstarter will cover the first phase of MAI’s development: the design process.” And that went toward the bill for Koolhaas’s firm for the schematic design (which cost $655,167.10). Artnet reported last week that backers wouldn’t be getting refunds.”

The conclusion of this article is nevertheless critical:

“Still, the Post is right about one thing: the understandable frustration that Hudson residents feel that the big, much-hyped building in the middle of town remains empty and dilapidated and full of pigeons. But it proved to be a money pit — $700,000 for asbestos alone — in addition to the unfeasible ambitions of the Koolhaas design itself. And so the institute will sell it, and focus on its traveling circus of projects around the world.”

The financial reeling & dealings of the first signatory of the campaign to restore Beatrix Ruf back in power are far from transparent. Is it her inflated personality that made Abramović undertake a project that was beyond her means? Can one say that someone who is able to raise a million or so from her own pocket is ‘naive’? How did she manage to have such personal capital? Certainly not by being naive. So we read that another signatory of the Pro-Ruf kongsi advertisement, Rem Koolhaas, did get his money for a plan that local observers in New York describe as the “unfeasible ambitions of the Koolhaas design.”

We locals do remember also newspaper articles about the costs of architect Rem Koolhaas who has been commissioned during the Beatrix Ruf ‘Stedelijk Museum directorship’ about an exceeding of a budget for interior museum redesign, originally estimated for 0.9 million costing 2,9 million in the end.

All this side-references and -effects are a good illustration of the ‘world class museum’ concept and its propagators it leaves us with atapestry of interwoven ideals and personal gainthat can not be disentangled.